President - Yes, Prime Minister

Congress is truly the party of Aam Aadmi. Every aam aadmi is a leader in the party. Every aam aadmi becomes its spokesperson. No, you don’t need any authorization to express your views on behalf of the party. At times, you don’t even need to be a member of the party. One such aam aadmi spokesperson is Mr. Harish Khare. After the exit of Anand Sharma to the cabinet, Mr.Khare has self-appointed himself to the post of Chief of Defense, Congress Party. Of course, N. Ram would have endorsed the post to be Office of Non – Profit and any doubts in this regard would be dispelled by Narayanan, Chief of Defense, The Hindu a.k.a Readers’ Editor.

In this latest defense of Congress, he points out the President’s use of “(doubtful) discretion” in returning the bill to the cabinet. Can he please enlighten us what was so “doubtful” about the discretion? The discretion is an explicit constitutional right and not an undefined constitutional term, like “Office of Profit”, which has been glaringly abused and whose retrospective legitimization was questioned by the President, while returning the bill.

Again, he feels that seeking the advisory opinion of the Supreme Court, another explicit constitutional right, independent of the cabinet’s advice, is “fraught with dangerous implications”. His source of interpretation? BJP’s such interpretation when they were at the helm of affairs.

What Mr. Khare effectively says is, “If someone, irrespective of their credentials and the prevailing circumstances, says something which can be used to your advantage, use it.”. Would he then justify demolition of mosque by Congress? It is ridiculous that Mr. Khare chooses to take constitutional classes from a party which he often denounces as being unconstitutional.

Mr. Khare’s warns that “The Zail Singh temptation needs to be firmly resisted.”

So, just as Rajiv Gandhi wanted to read the letter written by Amitabh to Rekha, Manmohan Singh might want to see whom Mallika is smooching tonight on her bed and might accordingly introduce a bill, Right to Intimate Information. It would be passed with voice vote and without debate as our geriatric parliamentarians any day would prefer watching Mallika’s mouth’s silent smooches to Mamta’s mouth’s screeching shouts, which might be followed by paper hurling.

In such an event, Mr. Khare expects the President to gladly give his assent and get ready for nocturnal revelry.

I don't defend Zail Singh's act of sitting on the bill, but the very fact that the successive Governement did not pursue the bill, vindicated the accusations that there was something patently anti-democratic in the Postal Bill.

May we remind Mr. Khare, that only if one such President applied his independent thinking, we could have avoided the biggest blot of Indian democracy - Emergency. If the President is supposed to be a glorified rubber stamp, then we would rather do away with him. He rightly points out that:

“In the coalition era, almost all constitutional offices are prone to take advantage of the political uncertainties, and seek to expand the scope of their power and authority at the expense of the executive. The higher judiciary is the prime example of this over-reach. Often this kind of activism is sought to be justified as a healthy caveat, necessary to produce the requisite checks and balances.”

But he falters at the next line, when he says that it would lead to paralysis of the Government. The “over-reach” which he accuses the higher judiciary, had given inter alia residents of Delhi breathable air, demolished illegal structures, banned strikes, prohibited smoking in public places, interpreted right to information as a fundamental right etc. Something which the executive could not do in 50 years. In a democracy, over-reach happens only when the designated authority fails to perform its function.

A simple point to ponder. In which period has India grown faster? From 1947 to 1977, when there was no worthy Opposition and literally no checks on the executive or between 1987 to 2007, when there are more voices, more opposition, more checks?